People-Powered Transformation

All of us are engaging in a transformation for the greater good. People-powered transformation will occur when and as fast as we allow it, but only when all the people it touches embrace that coming change.

We need to engage with our future. We need to unlearn and rethink our vast experiences. We need to revisit our preconceived notions of what can and cannot be changed. Discovering that your learned experiences are the new variables is very upsetting. It is, in fact, transforming.

We need to unhinge our minds and set new paths, go to lunch with the millennial generation while inviting the Centennials or even younger people that have grown up exclusively in the digital age. We need to learn what we do not know and not just keep repeating to them what we do know. We need to seek those that will lead the transformation of our industry.

Here are the birth years for each generation: Who are you? And who are your mentors and trusted advisors?

• Gen Z, iGen, or Centennials: Born 1996 and later.• Millennials or Gen Y: Born 1977 to 1995.• Generation X: Born 1965 to 1976.• Baby Boomers: Born 1946 to 1964.• Traditionalists or Silent Generation: Born 1945 and before.

Mentorship, remember, is when a more experienced person helps to guide someone less experienced, and the more experienced person is not necessarily the older one.

"'You are right to be confused,' says Harvard computer scientist Leslie Valiant, because the terms artificial intelligence and machine learning 'are suddenly being used interchangeably in the popular press.' Even Trevor Darrell, a leading artificial-intelligence researcher at UC Berkeley who’s also part of a DARPA-funded project on (wait for it) 'explainable AI' admits that 'there is no precise distinction—they overlap greatly.'"

We need to engage the creators and makers and have them look at our building industry and show us how to innovate and transform our buildings with self-acting comfort and satisfaction.

"Smart building players are strengthening their open innovation capabilities through investments and partnerships with startups and the incubators and accelerators that support their development. Corporates are recognizing the need to increase their agility and speed in developing smart connected products and services by leveraging software, analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) in order to maintain competitive advantage, to gain access to emerging or disruptive technologies, and to accelerate digital transformation. Meanwhile, startups need access to key industry players to better understand the unique challenges and opportunities of the smart buildings sector."

Good words in this article, Creating a Technology Road Map. “A plan for how that data will move beyond actionable insight to actual results is the modern requirement for these projects.”

This month’s theme of “People-Powered Transformation” is key as well. Readers may notice that this article focuses entirely on actions our people can take, rather than features our technology needs to provide. This approach may take us out of our comfort zones, but growth is rarely comfortable, and embracing this adaptation is critical. In that regard, the short answer to the question of how we get a customer “there,” from “here,” is the patience to move from solutions to strategies, a trusted process to do so, and a desire to be a partner to our customers rather than just a vendor.

Trends Towards Wearables and Wellbeing is a great example of people-powered transformation a real head shake of thought for sure; this white paper is well done by BSRIA. Special thanks to Lawson and Dawson for all their efforts.

I do not profess to understand all of this completely, but I do believe the people-powered transformation will occur when we openly discuss the concepts falling on us and invite them into our daily realities and make them part of our personal transformation.

I am extremely pleased to be a moderator and a media sponsor at the 2018 Nordic Smart Building Convention, Helsinki, June 6-7, 2018. I was extremely impressed with the information provided for our readers from last year’s great event. I am looking forward to interacting with panels and attendees at this event to learn more about some of my questions, such as, How does the smart building automation industry make the transformation that it needs to undergo?

Be the people to engage in our transformation by creating value from self-learned data while discovering transforming ways of providing comfort, health, and satisfaction in our buildings.

Ken Sinclair is the founder, owner, and publisher of an online resource called AutomatedBuildings.com. He writes a monthly column for FacilitiesNet.com about what is new in the Internet of Things (IOT) for building automation.